Investigative Resources: Tools For Researching Potential Scams

While the talented scammer may have his own bag of tricks, the consumer isn't left completely vulnerable. A cunning consumer can quite easily reveal a scam for what it is.

How can we as consumers do this? By using readily available investigative resources and tools.

Fortunately, this is often a simple task. Unfortunately, thousands of people fail to undertake these easy steps and end up spending money on bogus opportunities.

Below is a list of helpful sites and investigative resources that, when used correctly, can disarm alluring promotions.

Misc. Tools
www.whois.sc/
WhoIs is search tool that brings back registrant information on domain names. It is a very simple and very powerful resource. Simply enter the domain name and hit enter.

Why is this site so useful? Near the bottom of the page, you will see under whom the site (domain) was registered. You can then research that name or company for any complaints.

Unfortunately, registrant ID can be kept confidential by employing certain third party security sites, e.g. domainsbyproxy.com. In these situations, the security site shows up as the registrant.

These sites were created to help prevent scammers and spammers from identifying site owners. Unfortunately, these privacy security sites are now often used to protect the identities of those scammers and spammers.

Some people find such anonymous registrant IDs suspicious and refuse to do business with the related sites. Of course, all people who use these privacy sites are not running scams. Best advice, use your own discretion.

Forums

Forums are powerful investigative resources. Hundreds and thousands of people ask for and give advice on a daily basis. Chances are someone has either already asked your question, or someone will have an answer or insight to your question.

As useful of tools as forums may be, you must still be cautious. Not every poster is honest and helpful. Realizing that people come to forums seeking advice and insight, scammers and spammers are quick to promote their goods and services under the guise of a helping authority or as a good Samaritan.

Likewise, forums have no shortage of ruthless cynics, people who aren't the least bit hesitant to shred any and every idea that comes their way.

Ideally, you'll want to find people who are critical in their opinions and who are able to offer quantities of valuable advice. The more they're willing to share, the better. This can, however, be somewhat hard to find.

Best advice when it comes to forums, make note of people who provide high quality, detailed answers. Some of these people tend to post frequently, so keep tabs on what else writing. You may very well learn a lot from these people.

Here are a few forums worth checking out.

www.scam.com
This forum is home to a variety of scam topics. The site has lost favor with some, as spammers and cynics often find themselves colliding, and topics veer from being constructive towards being profane. Occasionally, the sudden turn can provide some nice comic relief, but that doesn't make it too informative.

Despite the flaws, scam.com is still a valuable investigative source of information, and the drawbacks are often worth tolerating.

www.work-at-home-forum.com
As the name implies, this site is dedicated to those interested or already involved with working from home. While not strictly focused on scams themselves, the topic of legitimate at home opportunities is not uncommon.

www.whydowork.com/forums
Though this site receives less traffic, it might still be worth taking a look at. There is a section dedicated to scams, and there are various other areas about working from home. However, you might not always find what you're looking for here.

Consumer Report/Advocacy Organizations
www.bbb.org
We're all familiar with the Better Business Bureau. And if you're dealing with a fairly large company, the BBB might come in handy. The BBB website keeps records of complaints filed against corporations.

However, many smaller work-at-home scammers don't get filed with the BBB. Because of this, your searches may not turn up many results.

www.ripoffreport.com
Ripoffreport.com keeps dozens of reports filed by dissatisfied consumers. The added benefit of this site is that you can actually read the consumer's report. By doing so, you will with what precisely a person had problems. That fact alone makes ripoffreport.com a powerful investigative resource.

Like the BBB, this site works best with larger companies. However, small-time scammers may also be hidden within the site's reports as well.

If you can't find your specific product or person (say, John Doe's Home Data Entry Millionaires) try searching by the product or services theme (data entry or home data entry in this case).

GPTBoycott.Com
Get Paid To Boycott is a site dedicated to making users of get paid to programs aware of scams and illegitimate companies. All variety of get paid to activities can be found here.

Complaints can be filed by consumers like yourself, lists of sites labeled as either "Banned" or "To Watch" mark programs to be avoided.

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